I’m Listening

A mother deals with an unruly teenager in this thoughtful short story by Patricia Belford.

ON the day she was fitted with hearing aids, Jenny overheard a worrying conversation. Her hearing had been deteriorating in the last year, but it had been a shock to discover that she needed not one, but two, hearing aids.

“For both ears?” she had asked the audiologist several weeks ago, when he had done comprehensive tests and was taking impressions of her ears.

“Yes. You’ll hear much better with two.”

Jenny protested that she was too young. She was only forty-three, which wasn’t old at all.

The young man assured her that being hard of hearing was a condition which affected people of any age.

So that afternoon she left the clinic wearing hearing aids for the first time.

Stepping into the street was quite a shock. She felt vulnerable as the noise of the traffic pounded through her head, almost unbearably loud.

A motorcycle roared through a red light and an ambulance rushed past her, its siren shrieking.

Even the bleeping of the pelican crossing seemed so loud and urgent that Jenny doubled her pace to reach the safety of the opposite pavement.

On the bus Jenny felt self-conscious, wishing she had managed to grow her hair long enough to cover the hearing aids, thinking that folk would be staring at her.

Then she realised that no-one was paying her any attention.

In fact, most of her fellow passengers were busy with their mobiles, or nodding their heads in time to music being played through their earphones.

One man had even worn a huge set of bright red headphones so that he resembled some kind of alien from outer space.

Jenny’s hearing aids were insignificant in comparison.

“Hi, love. How was it?” Her husband, Tom, rose from the kitchen table where he had been marking a set of exercise books.

He peered behind her ears.

“They’re hardly noticeable, and they match your hair.”

“Silver! Another reminder that I’m getting old.”

“Blonde. You’re in the prime of life,” Tom reassured her. “Just think how much better it will be now, especially when we go out.

“Which reminds me: are you still OK for the meal on Friday night?”

They had arranged to meet a few old friends at their favourite curry house.

“Of course. It will be a good test. When they’re all talking at once I usually just smile and try to nod in the right places.

“This time I should be able to join in the conversation.”

Tom grinned.

“That’s wonderful. I guess you’re feeling on top of the world!”

“Well, I will be once I get used to wearing them,” Jenny replied. “They feel strange just now.”

Tom returned to his exercise books.

In the quiet kitchen Jenny could even hear the tiny scratch of his red pen as he corrected someone’s spelling.

“I’ll make a pot of tea.” She was startled as she turned on the cold tap, for the sudden gush sounded like the waterfall they had seen in full flow during their last holiday in the Lake District.

And when the kettle boiled the noise seemed to fill the kitchen.

She set the steaming mugs and the biscuit tin on the table.

“Help!” she exclaimed a few minutes later.

“What?”

“That biscuit. I can hear myself crunching. The audiologist warned me that I would be over-aware of normal sounds at first.”

The front door banged as Amy arrived home.

“Hello, love. Had a good day?” Jenny called.

She exchanged glances with Tom as they braced themselves to greet their moody daughter.

Amy unhooked her earphones and glared.

“Mum, it’s Tuesday. Double maths in the morning and PE and

French in the afternoon. Tuesday was never going to be a good day!”

“Never mind, it’s over now and you usually enjoy

Wednesdays. Which reminds me, I need to put your PE clothes in the wash . . .”

It was too late. Amy had grabbed a couple of ginger biscuits and left the room and could be heard thumping upstairs.

“She never even asked how I got on at the clinic!” Jenny exclaimed.

“She’ll have forgotten. It’s her age, love. She’ll improve in time.

“Most of my sixth-form students are quite civilised,” Tom assured her.

“She’s been so difficult lately.

“She’s only fourteen, for heaven’s sake. Are we going to have to put up with her moods for another two years?”

With a sigh, Jenny began to load sheets into the washing machine.

Remembering the PE kit, she went into the hall and almost tripped over Amy’s school bag, which had been dumped on the floor.

A pencil case and a French dictionary had spilled out, and as Jenny pushed them back into the bag, a bright green flyer slipped out of the dictionary.

She called upstairs.

“Amy, will you please throw down your gym stuff?”

There was no reply so Jenny went upstairs.

She paused on the landing.

Amy’s door was slightly ajar and she was on her phone, no doubt to Cassie, her best friend, despite having been with her all day at school.

She was about to knock and walk in when she heard her own name.

“Mum won’t find out. I’ll tell her that I’m having a sleepover at yours on Friday night. You got the tickets?”

Jenny stood listening. Part of her was marvelling that with her new aids she had no difficulty catching the conversation, but what she was hearing was deeply disturbing.

“They’d never let me go after what happened last time.”

The name Green Strike was mentioned and struck a chord.

Jenny crept downstairs, fished the flyer out of the French dictionary and took it into the kitchen.

Green Strike, she discovered, was a pop group which would be playing at a venue in town on Friday night.

Now everything fell into place.

A couple of months ago they had given Amy permission to go to a music concert in that same venue.

As Tom and Jenny had meetings that evening, Cassie’s older brother,

Nick, had agreed to collect the girls at the end of the show and bring them home.

He had been delayed when his old car wouldn’t start. Finding that there was to be a long wait for a taxi, Amy and Cassie, fed up of hanging about, set off to walk home without letting their families know.

The subsequent hour and a half before they were found had been a nightmare.

Tom was in the lounge, about to turn on the television when Jenny handed him the flyer.

“Read this. Amy’s up to something. We have to decide what to do about it before she comes down for tea.”

****

“Tea’s ready,” Jenny called to her family.

She put a hot dish of lasagne on the table and Tom took the garlic bread out of the oven.

Amy appeared and sat down without speaking.

Jenny was glad to see that she ate hungrily and had a second helping. At least they didn’t have to worry about faddy teenage diets.

She and Tom had agreed to get the meal over with before tackling Amy.

Confrontations with her lately had been so fraught that they both felt tense and conversation was difficult.

As the meal ended and Jenny was making coffee, Tom looked across the table.

“Amy, have you forgotten where Mum went today?”

“What?” Amy frowned, then remembered.

“Oh, sorry, Mum. You’ve got your new hearing aids! Can you hear better now?”

Jenny exchanged an amused glance with Tom.

“Much better, thank you.”

“And because Mum can hear better,” Tom began, “when she was on the landing she overheard your plans for Friday night.”

He held up the concert flyer.

“I take it you weren’t going to tell us about this?”

For moment Amy looked shocked, then she leapt to her feet so quickly that her chair fell over.

“You’ve been spying on me! It’s not fair!” she shouted.

She stormed out of the kitchen.

“Now what do we do?” Jenny sighed.

“Give her time to calm down,” Tom suggested.

“You won’t get any sense out of her at the moment.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave you on your own, but I’ve got to go to the tennis club meeting.”

Tom was treasurer of the tennis club.

Alone in the kitchen later, Jenny filled the dishwasher, wiped down the worktops, then went into the lounge and slumped on the sofa.

All the excitement of being able to hear properly again had faded after

Amy’s outburst.

She picked up the television remote and began flipping through the channels, but she couldn’t settle to anything, not even her favourite antiques programme.

Finally, she switched the set off and tried to read the newspaper.

After a while, the door opened a little and Amy peered into the room.

Jenny was relieved to see her.

“Mum!” She ran across the room and flung herself on the sofa beside Jenny.

“Mum, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have made plans to go to the concert without telling you. I didn’t mean what I said.”

Jenny hugged her. “Darling, you may think we’re strict, but it’s for your own good. You’re only fourteen.

“That night when we couldn’t find you and

Cassie was so awful.

“Dad and I were very

“You’ve been spying on me! It’s not fair!”

frightened. Anything could have happened to you.” Amy sniffed.

“I know that, Mum. I do understand. It’s just that Green Strike’s my favourite group and all my friends are going to the concert.”

Jenny kissed her, then got up.

“Go and wash your face and I’ll make us some hot chocolate.

“Dad will be home soon and I think you should apologise to him, too.

“It’s been an upsetting evening for all of us.” A thought struck her. “Amy, have you bought a ticket?”

“I used the Christmas money that Auntie Sue sent me.”

Jenny heard Tom’s car and Amy fled to the bathroom.

Half an hour later, all three sat huddled together on the sofa.

Tom and Jenny exchanged glances.

“Amy, as you’ve apologised, we are going to let you go to the concert on Friday,” Jenny stated.

“You are to come straight out at the end and we will be waiting for you.

“We will bring you straight home. Understood?”

When Amy agreed, Tom reached for the remote.

“And now I’m going to watch the late news.” He switched on the TV. “For goodness’ sake,

Tom, turn it down!” Jenny cried.

The End.